Microprocessor-based electrical power distribution equipment such as switchgear, switchboards, panelboards, and motor control centers accumulate considerable amounts of information concerning the electrical distribution systems to which they are connected, as well as the power equipment itself. A common requirement for such equipment is the performance of regular maintenance and the generation and maintenance of up-to-date records of all testing and improvements performed. This is currently done via manual means or by entering data into a computer-based “maintenance log.”
Today's utility monitoring systems provide end-users with the capability to remotely monitor a variety of equipment via automatic monitoring devices. This allows more accurate data and decreases human resource requirements. Industrial automation, monitoring, energy management, and control systems include many microprocessor or microcontroller-based monitoring devices which communicate with each other, as well as with other computers, via the MODBUS® (hereafter “Modbus”) communication protocol.
The Modbus communication protocol is used with various slave devices that respond to read and write requests from a master controller. Among the features provided by this communication protocol are a means for the user to access data from and/or configure these intelligent slave devices. The Modbus physical layer may be an RS-232 or RS-485 serial connection from the slave device to the master controller or a connection over Ethernet, wrapped in a TCP/IP format, which provides the ability to access these devices from potentially anywhere via a network. The network configuration for use of the Modbus protocol wrapped in a TCP/IP format includes a gateway device that has a serial interface to receive data from the slave devices and an Ethernet interface to share the data with networked devices. The use of Modbus or similar protocols allows a large amount of data to be obtained from a monitored system. The analysis and control of such systems occurs with specialized monitoring software that manages the time-value data from the monitoring devices for various functions. Such software manages a large amount of data from complex systems and thus requires testing in order to ensure its proper operation.
Testing power monitoring software frequently requires access to test databases of large amounts of stored electrical data which represents the operating conditions where such data would be obtained from the monitoring devices in a system. Traditionally, the data for these test databases is generated using custom tools designed specifically for this purpose. These tools will bulk insert records of representative data into the database to represent logged electrical data simulating actual monitoring device outputs. The represented electrical data in the test databases is randomly generated. This process requires a large amount of data due to the complexity of the custom tools which sometimes require hours to generate a database in some cases. Further, the represented logged electrical data in the test database does not generate predictable data since it may be somewhat realistic but does not take into account real world events such as such as corrupted values or device communications losses. Such tools also generate a new dataset each time a test is run due to the pseudo-randomness of the algorithm underlying the custom tools. This creates a challenge when it is desired to have identical data in multiple data stores of different types for different simulation conditions. Finally, existing tools do not address the need for data that accurately reflects data obtained from real-time devices in real environments for simulation purposes.
Therefore there is a need for a power system simulation and database profiling that provides an improved way to generate test database profiles to test power-related software systems. An improved system is necessary for use of such test database profiles during the deployment/commissioning and support phases of a product.